


my new old friend

by rennik



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Amaurotine Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Patch 5.3: Reflections in Crystal Spoilers, haha ow these fruit gummies really hurt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:00:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25885468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rennik/pseuds/rennik
Summary: She picks up the crystals one by one, gentle with the memories of a people long gone.--Small drabble about the most painful fruit snacks I've ever encountered. 5.3 MSQ SPOILERS
Relationships: Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch & Warrior of Light
Kudos: 30





	my new old friend

Rhona can feel the crystals on the edge of her awareness, a barely there hum of aether that draws her attention even before she sees them shining on the tile floor. Nothing one moment, insistently yet indifferently there the next: the aetheric equivalent of a cat meowing for her attention and then turning away when she goes to it. Are they a “gift” from Elidibus? Or a remnant of Hades’s will, instilled within Amaurot, simply awaiting the right conditions to activate? Rhona’s not sure which she’d prefer; her feelings on Emet-Selch, on the Ascians and their cause and her own — ties — to them are a constant source of trepidation and grief and anger, all tangled together in an awful knot within her.

Still, she picks up the crystals one by one, gentle with the memories of a people long gone. They lead her outside, down Amaurot’s empty ( _but not forgotten, not anymore, never again_ ) streets, until she is found by Hythlodaeus, his voice kind as he gifts her the crystal of the Fourteenth. It is one, he says, that would never have existed save for the wishes of a stubborn and spiteful and stupidly loyal man, and suddenly there are tears in Rhona’s eyes as something within her slots into place and breaks all at once.

What do you do with a friendship you don’t remember but whose presence you can _feel,_ an eons-long ache within your soul? Rhona does not regret what she did to Emet-Selch — they were, she knows, she tells herself, on irreconcilable sides. She fights for the _future,_ for the people she cares about and the years that wind ahead of them, for their lives and happiness: theirs, and that of all those who come after. Emet-Selch fought for the past, for the people he had loved and lost but may yet bring back. There was — no other way, she knows.

But she can still _mourn_ him, what he went through, and his hopes, and his love for a friend that Rhona does not know and yet _is_. She can cry ugly, heaving tears from the chasm of her sundered self, feel grief and longing and utter devastation that Emet-Selch took the time to create a record for an exiled companion, and left it here for her to find with the kind, teasing words of a friend.

Rhona’s tears are dry by the time Y’shtola finds her, but she clutches the crystal against her heart and tucks the others safely into her bag, and as they return to Eulmore to discuss Elidibus’s plans — she tightens her grip and prays to it for the resolve to do what she must.


End file.
